Kemper, Where People Are Free

Kemper, appellated with varying degrees of irony as the place where "People Are Free" a fairly large bandit oasis town of roughly 40,000 people. Unaffiliated with any of the major empires (i.e. Kingdom Of Ishi or The Yhivan Empire), nor aligned with any other major culture group in Adellon (like Tavti or any Keshish culture), Kemper feels at once cosmopolitan and alien.   The advances in medicine across Adellon haven't quite caught up with Kemper's death rate, and it is one of the few major cities without a self-sustaining population. Instead, waves of exiles, vagrants, refugees, outcasts, and thrill seekers from elsewhere over the continent regularly make their way across the Okaylands in search of a better life. Whether or not Kemper can provide that is suspect, but the legend of Kemprish freedom has an appeal to many across the continent.   There is no official city government. Instead, various organizations, called domas exert control of territory and wider city policy is the emergent result of cooperation and conflict between them. This can make planning exceedingly difficult, but also has kept any particular doma or army or anyone from gaining absolute authority over the city, which the city's boosters cite as evidence it is a free place. They may be right. No centralized legal system means no one, and nothing, is considered truly illegal across the entirety of Kemper. That also may be exactly why Kemper is not a free city. Just as there are domas who regularly conduct raids on slave societies to liberate their captives, there are domas who finance themselves by selling services as kidnappers and slave merchants. A person may find themselves much freer in one neighborhood than another, and individual experiences will vary.

In the current year there are no domas near hegemonic status. A major recent political event was the wedding between the Yhivan human Ad-Gara Ora, of Doma Horsehead, and a Tavti orc  from Doma Coinsatchel named Lucky, and the brief but bloody war that followed after Lucky's kidnapping by Doma Mushroom. Doma Mushroom nearly succeeded in their plot to frame Doma Horsehead for Lucky's kidnapping, and many died and portions of the city burnt to the ground during the ensuing blood feud, before Doma Mushroom's machinations were discovered and the surviving Horsehead and Coinsatchel domali  effective broke Mushroom's grip on any city territory. Since then there has been a power vacuum in the city's north side, and it has never been easier for visionaries, entrepreneurs, warlords, or whatever other would-be culture shapers to form a viable doma themselves.